Uhh what are you DOING???

@HumanEarth That large one must be about as old as the US Constitution, and worth serious beaucoup scratch.

@NativePortlander1970 Them are 4 year olds.

@HumanEarth So then the documentary on Apalachian ginseng diggers I saw a few years back was lying through their teeth about how long it takes for ginseng to grow, and the cut throat market it demands.

@NativePortlander1970 Wild Ginseng and Cultivated Ginseng are totally different

The show you saw focused wild ginseng. Which what you saw is all true

Cultivated Ginseng (aka commercial Ginseng) is forced to grow with fertilization and artificially with chemicals.

@HumanEarth So I was somewhat correct surmising that root could have easily been 250 years old?

@NativePortlander1970 yes easily

@HumanEarth That's wild 😲

@NativePortlander1970 In Wisconsin, wild ginseng is a protected species and supposedly its against the law to take it out of the woods.

I can't yes or no to this, because I never looked it up

@HumanEarth Yet according to the documentary, it was perfectly alright to hunt and gather the wild stuff, and that there were a lot of poachers going into West Virginia from Kentucky onto private land, and getting shot for tresspassing.

@NativePortlander1970 That is there, here in Wisconsin Wild ginseng is rare and it only grows in a few places in Wisconsin naturally. So that makes it even more rare